Five Things that Never Happened to Dick Grayson

by K_dAzrael

Summary:

"You know you are actually the worst father-figure I could possibly imagine." Drabbletastic master/apprentice AU, for my dearest tanndell.

I

 

The men were all tall and he couldn't really see until they moved aside for the ambulance crew. There were sheets draped over – draped over them, and that's when he knew. No mouth-to-mouth, no medical equipment, just two sheet-covered shapes being lifted onto stretchers.

His eyes burned and his lip trembled. A crowd of men in navy blue, blood on the sawdust, swinging rope – cleanly cut, not frayed.

"Richard, isn't it?"

He looked up and saw a man in a suit that was dark grey – not a police officer. His hair and short beard were pure white and he wore an eyepatch; in his dazed state Dick wanted to ask him if he had been in the war.

"I mostly get called Dickie, or Dick."

The man got down on one knee and took hold of his upper arms. It was reassuring to have someone at his own level.

"A terrible thing happened tonight, Dick, but if you come with me I'll help you fix it."

"How?"

"First we'll make you strong. Then we'll find who did this, and we'll make them pay for what they took from you."

*~*~*

II

 

"You made me proud, kid," Deathstroke's hand rested on his shoulder and squeezed. Dick fumbled with the custom hawk-shaped throwing blade and it clattered to the rooftop, slippery with blood. He took a step back and rubbed his gloves on his bifurcated blue and orange tunic.

"Harrier. Look at me."

Dick had to breathe in and out a few times before he could lift his head.

"Tony Zucco was a low-life scumbag who killed your parents because he owed the mob a measly few hundred dollars. Because of you he won't kill anyone else ever again, got it?"

"I know. Why do I feel so sick?"

"Just the first time, I promise."

*~*~*

III

 

"Ten for effort kid, but four for style," he heard Slade's voice say as arms slipped beneath his knees and around his shoulders. He felt himself hefted from the ground, and there was a delayed reaction before he cried out at the pain in his chest. "Those ribs bruised or broken?"

"Bruised," he gasped out (he knew what cracked felt like).

"Told you not to go after the bat, little bird. You're lucky you had enough left to drag yourself away – you're too pretty for prison."

"You'd break me out," he said, laughing raspily into his mentor's chest.

"Would I now? Might teach you a lesson if I didn't."

"You'd have no-one to jerk around."

He felt Slade's chest rumbling – a sound which seemed to him, in his delirious state, almost soothing.

*~*~*

IV

 

"Jesus fucking Christ, Slade, are you insane?!"

Slade put down his newspaper and fixed his one pale blue eye on the teenager glowering at him with his palms splayed on the table. "You seem upset, Dick. Did you not like your birthday present?"

"Who buys an eighteen-year-old a prostitute? You know you are actually the worst father-figure I could possibly imagine–"

"And you're strangely prudish for a circus-raised boy-assassin. What's wrong, kid, don't you like brunettes?"

"You're a dog, Slade."

"Oh so that's it?" Slade rose from the table, taking a step towards him. "Should have been something taller, broader, deeper voiced, hm? Older, maybe? Tie you up and let you call him daddy – is that what you need, Dickie?"

Slade's head snapped back with the force of the punch but his stance didn't falter. He touched his fingers to his lip and dabbed at the split skin. "Like I always say – for you, the first one's free. After that you'd better be calling me out."

Dick clenched his fists down by his sides and got his breathing under control. "I wouldn't give you the satisfaction. I'm leaving."

*~*~*

V

It was raining in the cemetery, just like the day his parents were buried. Dick turned his collar up and went to join the solitary figure by the open grave.

"So you heard." Slade stated flatly. "Didn't think you'd come."

"You know I loved Rose, she was my sister." He bent to pick up a handful of freshly turned earth and cast it into the mouth of the grave. "I'm sorry. If I'd been around I'd have told her not to take the job – she wasn't ready. She should never have gone to the 'haven."

Slade nodded. "I told her that. She never had your agility, or your self-preservation instincts – always just relied on brute strength instead of thinking things through."

They stood side by side in silence for a while. Dick linked his arm with the older man's, wanting to feel for a moment like it hadn't all been one of Deathstroke's scams – that they had really been a family, of sorts.

"You're all I have left now," Slade said. "I guess I always knew that's how it would be, one day."

There was still a part of Dick that wanted to kick, scream and deny, but he'd already been to the other side of the world in a bid to shake off Slade, and it hadn't succeeded. Slade was the voice at the back of his head, the one that said 'get up kid, you're better than this.'

"If I stay with you things have to be different."

Slade turned his head and looked at Dick with that familiar mix of mockery, curiosity and pride. "Set your terms."

Later, the motel coverlet was rough under his knees and daylight spilled in from between the blinds, casting bars of shadow across the bed. Slade lay on his back underneath Dick, a hand curled around one of the slats of the headboard, the other on the younger man's waist, rhythmically squeezing and releasing.

"Talk to me," Dick panted, rocking back, feeling the slick stretch and burn of Slade's dick inside him.

Slade shifted, arching his spine a little – and oh God, so fucking good... "What's there to say?"

"Oh, I don't know, just – I need to know it's you."

Slade grinned wickedly. "Fantasized about it much?"

"Oh – fuck! – constantly."

"You're beautiful, kid. If you knew how long I wanted it to be this way – you'd probably have me arrested." Slade did something with his hips, pushing in with a twist that rubbed everything just right.

Dick moaned, loudly. "Goddamn Slade Wilson, you're a dirty old man."

"Here I always figured that was what you liked about me."

Dick opened one eye, pushing the sweat-dampened hair off his forehead with shaky fingers. "Ok, you can really stop talking now and just fuck me."

Slade had him flipped on his back with his legs hiked up over the other's shoulders in what seemed like a split-second. Before Dick even got the breath back in his lungs Slade was pushing up and in, hard and relentless.

A deep kiss, then the scratch of bristles against his jaw and that low, rumbling voice again: "whatever you say, boss."

Notes:

'Harrier' is obviously Dick's alterna-Robin name. It's a name shared by a type of hawk, fighter jet and hunting dog.

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Apprentice AU